


i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

by hrwinter



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: A Christmas Tree, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Flustered Lena, Injury Recovery, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Oblivious Kara, Pre-Relationship, Sick Character, Sickfic, ass palmage, its minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-01-25 18:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21360679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrwinter/pseuds/hrwinter
Summary: Lena breaks her ankle, and Kara insists on carrying her everywhere (to meetings, to galas, to conferences, to press releases.) Lena spirals.(Prompt: A sick/injury recovery fic where Kara takes care of Lena)
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 148
Kudos: 1882
Collections: Supergirl Femslash Secret Santa 2019





	i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [S_Nebulosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Nebulosa/gifts).

Lena Luthor is no stranger to death threats. She’s been shot at. She’s been stabbed. She’s been poisoned. She’s been held hostage for an involuntary alien wedding ceremony. You name it, it’s happened. But somehow, throughout all of those near misses and close calls, she’s never been seriously hurt. Sure, there’d been scratches, cuts, and bruises, but she’s never broken a bone. Even the poisoning, she woke up on her couch a few minutes later, just fine.

She attributed it to her Luthor constitution. They’d always been difficult to kill.

That said, she would’ve thought at least _one_ of those things would’ve taken her down first. An assassination attempt. A break-in. An abduction.

Not a street grate.

Not a street grate sitting innocently in the middle of the side walk. Not a grate Lena has seen nearly every week for the last few years. A street grate that sits between Lena’s office and Noonan’s, the restaurant Kara drags her to every few days to enact some sort of elephantine level food consumption ritual.

But it does. Her red bottomed Louboutin heel catches in the patterned opening. It catches because she’s just seen Kara leaning against the wall of the café. It catches because Kara’s wearing a pale pink dress, _tight_, and Lena’s eyes track over it like a Parisian street artist, absorbing every single detail, every visible abdominal muscle sitting hidden, gorgeous and punishingly silhouetted by fabric. It catches because she’s looking at Kara and not where she’s stepping, and the heel doesn’t break, Lena’s ankle does. She goes down with a twist and a sickening crunch.

In an instant, Kara’s there before Lena hits the pavement, fingers gripped at her waist, and the air in Lena’s lungs catches at her sudden proximity.

“Are you alright, Lena? That didn’t look good,” Kara breathes, glancing down.

Pain is blossoming in her ankle, but Lena’s still a little too flustered to reply while Kara handily holds her up with one hand. The other drops her glasses down her nose.

“It’s broken,” she sighs before pushing her glasses back into place. “Gosh, how did that happen?”

Yes, how _did _Kara’s abs happen? Specifically and so disastrously to Lena? Her increased heart rate is not helping either, in fact it’s making her ankle throb to the tempo of every beat.

“Those heels are too well made,” Kara comments, and are her pupils dilated? Lena’s not sure, she can’t focus through the pain, and she whines a little.

Suddenly, she’s hoisted into Kara’s arms and held bridal style.

“Wha—where are we going?” she manages four meager words, slipping her arms thoughtlessly around Kara’s neck.

Kara maneuvers them into the alley, out of the realm of public witness. Lena’s face is close to hers, they’re almost cheek to cheek. She keeps thinking she’ll get used to it, to this, to Kara, but she never really does.

“The DEO, we have to get that looked at,” Kara answers simply, blowing a bit of her ice breath onto Lena’s ankle to reduce the swelling, and _god, _that does not help at all.

Or does it?

Plus, _the DEO?_

“We’re not the ER,” Alex grumbles Lena’s exact thoughts minutes later when they’re setting her up in the medic bay.

“It’s not safe for Lena to use public hospitals,” Kara counters, adding a very Supergirl hands-on-her-hips move for emphasis.

“Why? Because they don’t have street grates?” Alex quips, and Lena glares at her.

“Why didn’t the shoe come off?” Alex ignores the look, puzzled. “Or the heel break?”

“You use a blow dryer on Louboutins when you first buy them,” Lena answers with a wince. Her ankle is the size of a grapefruit. “They never come off.”

“You use a—what?” Alex shakes her head. “Nevermind, that will never apply to me. And, anyway, I thought you had a personal medical staff for this kind of thing?”

And maybe Lena does. Maybe she does have a private doctor on call. Maybe she hadn’t notified her. Maybe she prefers Kara nearby, holding her, and hovering worriedly by her side.

“If it’s really such a bother,” she answers, picking at lint on her thigh. “I can alert them.”

This earns a pointed glare from Kara to Alex.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Alex rolls her eyes at her sister. “It’s fine. We’ll do it here.”

* * *

The exam doesn’t take long. Lena’s able to craft a few texts to Jess, her secretary, and to Sam, her CFO, about covering her meetings for the day. The cast fitting is fairly routine, too, because the break is relatively clean as injuries go. But Lena’s less thrilled to hear about the alleged timetable to recovery.

“How long did you say I’m going to be in… this?” she asks, gesturing around her cast with distaste.

“Six to eight weeks,” Alex answers in a clip.

“_Six weeks_?”

“I’m sorry to say for us mere mortals, healing takes time,” Alex replies sardonically. “We don’t all have the luxury of sitting under a sun lamp and being set for the day,” she gestures at Kara, “there’s no shortcuts, I’m sorry to say, not even for billionaires like you.”

Lena grumbles. It’s December _for Christ’s sake. _She has all kinds of events to attend; Christmas parties, charity volunteering, holiday galas, fiscal end of year meetings and announcements. And banging around on crutches wasn’t exactly part of her fashion accessory plan.

Plus, there’s her annual tree lighting at her children’s hospital. She _always_ puts the star on the tree. How will she do that with a cast on?

_God damn that street gate. God damn Kara and her delicious abs._

“If you keep the weight off it, and I mean entirely Lena, it could be sooner than that,” Alex concedes, looking more sympathetic in response to Lena’s dark brooding. “But you’re still looking at four weeks minimum.”

Lena sighs. Loudly.

“I can help,” Kara offers brightly. “I can take you home, carried the whole way. No weight at all.”

Alex glances at Kara a bit judgmentally. She hasn’t left Lena’s side once this afternoon. She’s been excitedly showing Lena heartwarming videos of puppies and kittens, telling Lena terrible jokes that she laughs at every time. She can’t help it. She can’t help but be filled by Kara’s warmth like soaking in a scented bath. Kara is high noon sun, and Lena turns to her dutifully like a pursuant flower.

“Are you ready?” Kara prompts again, gently bringing Lena back to the land of the living.

Alex snorts somewhere in the background, but Lena manages to nod. She lifts up her arms, and Kara picks her up again, blanket and all. She slings Lena’s crutches over her back like some sort of injury Sherpa, and they head to her penthouse.

* * *

The ride over is less frigid than before, given the blanket and Kara’s endless midsummer warmth. Kara doesn’t set Lena down immediately when they arrive. Instead, she keeps Lena in her arms as they access her apartment from the balcony. She carries her into the living room and nods towards the couch. Lena feels her muscles ripple through her shoulders, and she can’t suppress an answering bodily shudder.

“You want me to set you up there?” Kara asks. “I can get your computer?”

“Sure,” Lena answers, still a little underwater from the scent and feel and nearness of Kara.

Kara places her carefully on the couch, lifts her leg and sets her ankle gingerly on a pillow on her coffee table. She returns shortly with Lena’s small collection of technology: iPads, computers, cell phones, and earbuds. Lena moves reluctantly to take them, a signal Kara is quick to notice.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, fretting and seating herself next to Lena. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“No, no. I’m just disappointed about the tree lighting at the Luthor Children’s Hospital, I suppose,” Lena admits quietly. “I always put the star on the tree.”

Kara smiles warmly.

“Everyone knows how you dote on those kids,” she reassures. “You could have someone else do it? I’m sure that wouldn’t look bad considering your cast.”

“It’s not that, I—” Lena starts, realizing belatedly that she’s about to sound like a petulant child. She can’t help it. “I always do it. I like doing it.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Kara continues to smile. “My genius best friend.”

To Lena’s utter devastation, Kara reaches out and smooths a finger over the wrinkle between her eyebrows. Lena struggles not to flutter her eyes closed, disappointment bleeding right out of her.

* * *

Lena follows Alex’s orders to the letter. She keeps weight off of her ankle. She ices it daily and keeps it elevated, but she finds herself wholly unprepared for the vast array of inconveniences, small and large, that meet her throughout any given day.

At first, it’s little things like having to use her crutches just to get a glass of water. Then, it’s bigger things like stairs. Like driving. Like the simple act of getting dressed in the morning. Pants are out of the question. And it’s _cold_. Plus, a cast looks terrible with a skirt. She hates her own reflection in the mirror.

She can’t help but feel undermined by her injury in every way. It makes her look clumsy, ungracefully limping to chairs at meetings. It makes her late, forced to wait until everyone leaves a room before she awkwardly follows after. It adds wasted minutes that turn into wasted hours to every day, and it makes her feel helpless. She’s used to being mobile. She’s _Lena Luthor_. She’s independent, she controls a room with a look, she walks fast in the corridors of L-Corp and tells underlings to “talk while we walk.” Now she’s reduced to laying out flat just to use the toilet.

It’s emasculating.

And there’s Kara continually showing up like some sort of wonderful, out of the blue, wish genie. At the top of the lobby stairs at L-Corp when Lena’s staggering, suddenly she’s there, holding out her arms to pick Lena up and carry her down. She’s there to help Lena into her town car. She flies Lena home when she stays late at the office. She’s even there one alarming instance outside of Lena’s bathroom when Lena almost falls out of the shower.

“Are you okay?” she calls just beyond the door, and Lena nearly slips again in surprise.

_She’s naked, _for God’s sake_._ And not in a sexy way, in a saran-wrapped cast, wobbling about kind of way.

“I’m fine!” she sputters out, reaching frantically for her robe. She’s not even sure why she bothers when her best friend has cursed x-ray vision.

(Kara does seem a little flustered when she exits the bathroom to meet her.)

Kara’s somehow everywhere, and it’s not like Lena hates it. But she doesn’t love it either. Lena is a self-sufficient woman, damn it, and Kara’s treating her like she feels, that is to say; completely incapable. She knows it’s childish, winy, certainly overdramatic, but it’s only—why are there so many stairs in this city? Why are crutches so fucking annoying?

As Lena’s regarding a set of stairs balefully outside of a restaurant where she’s meeting an investor, Kara’s there again in a whoosh of air. She’s in her Super suit, and Kara has Lena in another bridal carry and up to the top before Lena can even breathe a word of greeting. Or warning. But how is Lena supposed to say no when Kara lingers, her sweet scent wafting over Lena, her eyes glimmering a freshwater blue?

“Are you okay?” she breathes peppermint and honey.

No.

Lena is not okay.

She’s used to Kara’s proximity. Her total lack of personal boundary. Her disarming and brutal attractiveness. These things, Lena has learned to live with. But this new and boundless determination to touch, cradle, and caress every square inch of her body is simply and to the point: _too much_.

It’s going to break her resolve. Her self-control. Her spirit.

The other night, Kara even offered to give her a massage.

“You just—look so tense,” she’d qualified at the reaction of careful neutrality fixed on Lena’s face.

And who was she to look a gift massage in the mouth? Obviously, an idiot, she discovered moments later when Kara’s breath was hot on her neck, her fingers digging sublime and relentless into her shoulder muscles.

“Is this helping?” Kara had asked, and had she sounded breathless?

“Uh,” Lena had answered in return, the picture of eloquence.

It’s all just—_too much._

It’s not like Kara hadn’t been tactile before, she _had_, and Lena had responded to it with perfect predictability. Distracted. Enamored. Short of breath. She was acutely aware of the invisible, nebulously laid ground rules to keep it from becoming _something more_. Ground rules she herself had set and then broken repeatedly.

  1. No snuggling (first broken October 24th, 10:03 PM)
  2. No hair playing (multiple infractions)
  3. No sleepovers (first broken June 16th, 9:21 PM)
  4. No handholding (multiple infractions)
  5. No kissing of cheeks, of mouths, of necks (unthinkably still in tact)

Kara’s making it _really hard_. Every lingering touch. Every soft and inviting smile. It’s driving her _fucking crazy_, and people have noticed. Photos of Supergirl carrying her all over the city have cropped up in the tabloids.

_“A Luthor and a Super? Star crossed romance? Read more on page 6”_

It’s adorable.

And infuriating. Lena doesn’t need the press to remind her of what she doesn’t have. And the reminder is constant. Lena gets the sense that it’s the topic of nearly every hushed conversation inside and outside of L-Corp, this Sunday’s brunch being no exception.

Lena’s crutching her way along to their weekly reserved table when she overhears Alex criticize,

“—do you have to palm her ass so much when you carry her? Maybe it wouldn’t make the front page if you showed even a _little_ restraint.”

“It’s—that’s the best leverage,” Kara hisses back. “There are—heavier areas. I’m keeping her balanced.”

“Oh please, nothing for you is heavy—”

“Lena! Hi!” Kara greets suddenly, whirling around with an overly cheery smile.

She jumps up from her seat at the table, eager to help Lena with a hand at her waist. Sam smirks, sipping benignly from a champagne flute with piqued interest.

“It’s fine,” Lena hushes, waving off Kara’s help, leaning her crutches against the wall and awkwardly shuffling herself into the seat.

Kara sits, too, accidentally crushing a fork into a ball that she discreetly tries to hide in her pocket. Alex snatches up the paper that they’d all been oogling.

“Too late, I’ve already seen it,” Lena declares. “Apparently, I’m dating Supergirl.”

Kara blushes a rose petal pink. It’s torturously charming. She tries to hide her cheeks behind an aggressive drink of water while Lena’s left to consider when her attraction to Kara began to spin wildly out of control.

“Yeah, Kara, several news outlets are wondering why Supergirl doesn’t help everyone with their broken bones,” Alex ribs her sister. “Any insights as CatCo’s leading investigative journalist?”

Kara’s already flush, embarrassed face reddens further.

“Maybe she would if she—had the time—” Kara stammers in defense.

“Old people, kids in wheelchairs,” Sam chimes in, listing on her fingers. “Drunk people falling out of the bar. Supergirl doesn’t seem to be too concerned with any of them.” 

“I would—she would if she knew!”

“And how does Supergirl know when I need her help, hm?” Lena intones, canting her head towards Kara. “She seems awfully aware of _just_ when I need her.”

Kara picks insolently at her eggs, ignoring the attention of all three women.

“Not telling. A reporter always protects her sources.”

Lena hums.

Later that night, Lena dozes off on the couch after Kara makes dinner, after Kara dresses her in her softest, comfiest clothes. She’s sprawled out in Kara’s lap, certainly another infraction of her rules, when she wakes with a start. Kara’s lifted her again, their bodies close as she walks them to her bedroom, and Lena unconsciously nuzzles into her neck, following the source of that sweet, vanilla scent. But she also picks up a pungent, chemical smell and gazes up at Kara.

She’s so _pretty._

“I smell sharpie,” she accuses, sleep muffled.

“That’s, ha, that’s weird,” Kara replies, but Lena knows that guilty look.

“Did you—sign my cast?”

“No,” Kara answers, much too quick.

It’s things like this. Things like the colossal, red-sharpied heart drawn on her ankle cast. It’s Kara snoozing next to her, still clothed, but with a hand placed affectionately on Lena’s waist. It’s Kara getting groceries, bringing take-out, cleaning Lena’s apartment, and texting her sweet things like _‘thinking of you’ _and _‘I hope you’re feeling good.’_ It’s the little changes she’s wrought over everything in only a few weeks, the added coziness, the plush blankets and pillows, the nesting feel of Kara wriggling herself into Lena’s life.

Lena knows her best friend is only doing it because she’s injured. Kara loves to help, but when Lena doesn’t need it anymore, she knows she’ll leave in two (to four) weeks when the cast comes off. Then, the changes will slowly fade. Lena’s penthouse will become sterile and vacant. Kara will go away, and they’ll fall back into the amicable distance they’d shared before.

It’s just… not fair.

* * *

It’s only been thirty minutes, but Lena’s already developed a tension headache from her holiday committee meeting.

“Ms. Luthor, we need to discuss the details around your annual tree lighting ceremony.”

“What’s there to discuss?” Lena replies sullenly as she stares resolutely down at her leather-bound notepad. It’s empty, but they don’t need to know that. “I thought everything had already been approved in November.”

“Well,” Janet from Events begins cautiously. “We need to decide who will replace you during the star placement.”

“I’d still like to do it,” Lena grits, stubborn.

“But how?” Janet answers, turning to her colleagues. “The stairs we use now would be too dangerous. I guess we could use a crane. Or some sort of elevator lift?”

They take furious notes, but Lena grinds her teeth, plasters on a signature smile.

“That’s out of the question,” she maintains in a faux calm voice. “That would—look ridiculous. The cost alone would be outrageously expensive. Think of the message that would send when we could donate that to upgrades in the hospital, free prosthetics to families in need.”

“I agree, Ms. Luthor,” Janet returns her gaze. “The best option would be to provide a substitute. Ms. Arias, perhaps?”

Lena knows it’s the rational choice. She knows Sam would do an excellent job. It’s not even a _hard job_. It’s a star hanging, not rocket science, but it still doesn’t sit quite right. Lena doesn’t even want the attention. It’s just—

Not fair.

She stews, drumming her fingers along the mahogany conference table until a knock at the door interrupts their session.

“Ms. Danvers is here for lunch,” Jess politely informs her, hand on the handle.

“Let’s break for twenty minutes,” Lena sighs.

Everyone files out of the room, and Lena presses her hand over her face. She can practically feel Kara enter, however, probably something to do with the radiance she emanates from her person at all times. Lena opens her eyes to find her hands filled with white paper bags.

“Big Belly Burger, your favorite!” she chirps in elation.

“Oh, Kara,” Lena manages with a muted smile. “You’re the best.”

She’s happy to see Kara, she is. She loves Big Belly Burger, but… there’s something cloying in the way that Kara brings her favorite lunch, dotes on her night and day, crushes Lena’s body to hers, but still calls them—

“That’s what friends are for!”

_Ah, yes. _

That.

Confidence wounded, Lena moves to stand awkwardly by her chair. She needs some sort of liquid reassurance right now, and she’s forgotten her cappuccino in her office. As she wobbles, reaching for her crutches, Kara’s there, ever present with that tormenting and familiar hand at her waist.

“I can get it,” she insists.

“You don’t even know what I need,” Lena replies questionably short of terse.

“What do you need?”

Lena falters, and the moment lingers much too long for her liking. What she needs—god—what she needs is—

She pulls away from Kara before she lets that thought complete. Lillian used to tell her it was wasteful to wish for something she could never have.

“It’s fine, I can do it,” Lena clenches her jaw, pushing her crutches under her arms, but Kara won’t give up. She stays her crutches with a hand.

“No, really, let me,” she persists with a fond smile. “You’re like Tiny Tim on those crutches, it’s cute—”

“I said I’m fine!” Lena finds herself snapping. “I don’t need your help!”

Kara freezes, eyebrows furrowed. She removes her hands from Lena’s crutches, and it feels like she’s receded a thousand miles away. It makes Lena’s panic rocket sky high.

“I have six god damn degrees,” Lena substantiates, as if anything in the world could qualify that outburst. “I can get my own coffee from my office.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara says after a deafening quiet, and somehow, Lena feels even worse. She swings erratically from regret to sadness to absolute indignation.

“Just—stop doing things for me,” she demands. “I’m not some injured little bird.”

“Okay,” Kara raises her hands, stepping away so that Lena can pass her.

And nothing feels stupider than trying to dramatically storm from a room on crutches.

* * *

She ends up hiding in her office, not eating lunch, and telling Janet from Events that Sam can do the star hanging.

She feels absolutely terrible, and she curses that fucking street grate. She’s going to file a complaint with the city to have it removed.

* * *

Lena does not have the street grate removed, it feels too petty.

Although less petty, somehow, than yelling at her well intentioned best friend, the consequences of which have created a reactive silence that stretches like an ocean between them. It’s expansive. A desolate wasteland. Lena knew it would feel terrible when Kara left, and she’d thought (like a fool) that it might feel better if she simply pushed her away first, but it doesn’t.

She’d underestimated the bitter, clenching feeling in her chest every time she’s alone at her apartment. The painful dryness in her throat when she sees Kara’s things stretched out over her couch and living room chairs, all blatant reminders that once Kara had cared.

Lena piles Kara’s blankets and pillows into the guest bedroom and shuts the door. In a really, very low moment, she simply crawls to her refrigerator, feeling too bruised and sore from the crutches, and breaks into a pint of ice cream that she deigns to eat on her cold concrete floor.

This is what she deserves, after all. Eating on the floor. Not a veritable sun god doing her dishes and tucking her in at night. Kara really should be out there helping old people and drunks and what not, just like Sam said.

Definitely not Lena.

It’s only a few days until the tree lighting, anyway. A few more until her doctor says they can look at fitting her with a boot. Then Lena can waddle around like a pregnant woman, and Kara helping her will become a distant memory. Without her, maybe Lena will even become touch-starved enough to finally go on that date. The date she hasn’t even been asked on yet. It’s a New Year’s Resolution, regardless, that she keeps postponing. It’s funny how mooning over her straight best friend has been entirely unproductive to that cause.

So, yes, this is all for the best.

Even if Lena misses Kara to the depths of her ever living soul. Even if she types and deletes several hundred apology messages.

_Yes, yes._ This is for the best.

It’s a mantra she tells herself at the charity event. It’s what she plans to tell Sam, too, who has already given Lena several sympathetic squeezes to her shoulder. She must really look pathetic. But at least the event is going well. Janet simply out did herself.

There’s a faux ice rink with children screaming in laughter as they slip and slide. Beautiful lights hang from every right angle. There’s free hot chocolate and plenty of ADA-accessible rides to and from the grounds. There’s even a cookie decorating station with every color icing. The tree itself, too, is glorious, several stories tall. It’s ornamented impeccably.

Lena gazes up at it, eyes flickering over the adjoining, bright red stairs. She sighs heavily, and there’s an unexpected whoosh at her side.

“Are you okay?” a breathless voice asks with the lilt of Kara’s soothing concern.

Lena jumps. It takes a moment to register Kara’s actually standing in front of her in her superhero regalia. The rush of relief she feels at seeing her is so powerful, she almost bowls her over in a hug, but… something else abruptly occurs to her.

“Are you—have you been listening to when I sigh?”

Kara immediately colors prettily around her cheeks and neck.

“I—well, yes. You always do that when you’re—I don’t know, when you need help with something.”

Lena’s eyebrow lifts. Ears listening to the whole city, and Kara comes straight away when Lena sighs?

“Not that you need help, Lena!” Kara is quick to correct, holding her hands up defensively. “Rao, I’m so sorry, I came without thinking, I heard you and it was just automatic, I’ll go—”

“No, Kara, stop,” Lena says, a hand at her bicep (and _god, _what a bicep). “I’m the one that should be sorry. I really shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I mean, I do need help. You must think I’m an awful hypocrite.”

Lena gestures to the holiday fairgrounds. Obviously, she wants to help those who need it, and she herself isn’t exempt from that.

“No, of course not, I would never think that about you,” Kara replies sincerely, stepping closer, her breath blowing white in the cold night air. “Everyone needs a little help sometimes.”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Lena confesses with self-deprecation. “I’m sure you want to get back to your life. You can’t enjoy babysitting me all the time.”

“I do, Lena—I mean, not babysitting, but I always want to be around you. This was just a good excuse.”

Lena contemplates that statement, biting her lip. She wonders what Kara is really trying to say. This is the closest, after all, they’ve ever come to defining this amorphous _thing _between them. Kara is painfully near, too, eyes as blue and clear as ever, golden hair soft and thick as it curls at her neck.

Lena decides to go for it.

“Are you saying you enjoy the excuse to ‘palm my ass’ in front of the cameras?”

It’s more glib than she intends, but at least, finally, she’s asked.

“Ha ha-ha,” Kara laughs, fumbling. “So, you did hear that—and you just quoted it back to me—that’s, that’s great.”

Lena lifts an eyebrow, not letting her off the hook, and Kara swallows.

“But, yes, yeah, yes,” she repeats with a vigorous nod of her head.

“Me too,” Lena smiles soft at their somewhat mutual admissions, and all feels right in the world. It helps, of course, too that she’s still stroking Kara’s bicep.

“Ms. Luthor?” Jess disturbs them quietly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’re about to hang the star.”

Sam meanders over at the sound of that, and Lena gets the distinct impression that she’d been waiting and watching. Her smirk is a little too all knowing.

“Here,” she says, passing Lena the giant, garish bright gold star. Lena takes it, worrying her lip with her teeth again and turning back to Kara.

“Do you think you could—?” she points to the top of the tree.

Kara nods, and Lena barely hears the loud microphone introduction. She barely hears the roar of the crowd, children and adults alike, when they realize Supergirl is hoisting the CEO of L-Corp to the top of the tree. Lena carefully places the star, and the lights blaze to life, dancing to the rhythm of a Mariah Carey or something or other. Lena hardly hears it.

Instead, she feels Kara kiss languorous at the corner of her mouth. Her lips parts instinctively in surprise. A hundred cameras must go off at once, but Lena doesn’t register them as Kara’s lip just barely grazes the swell of her own. Kara clutches her closer.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispers against the shell of Lena’s ear.

**Author's Note:**

> i have some cute artwork to go with this. come say hi to me @hrwinter on tumblr/twitter!


End file.
